Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Heads Up: Be the First Responder! Your Turn to Talk

It has become clear to many of us that lots of head injuries and concussions go undiagnosed. There are a number of reasons for this:

Athletes want to stay in the game.

Denial is a powerful tool.

Concussions impair judgment even when our best interests are at stake.

The signs can be subtle.

Players often think a headache after a soccer game is a normal part of the game and "suck it up."

Or the camp counsellor might think "Of course she needs to take a nap today, she fell out of her bunk last night."

In order to better understand what a concussion actually feels like, I am hoping to tap into the collective intelligence of my readers and their friends in order to "crowd source" this information. I want to know what it felt like to have a concussion; what people around said and did, including coaches, parents, teachers and medical providers. I want to hear what part of your head hurt and what else you experienced.

This Questionnaire has already gone out through friends and family and is coming back to me with some astounding detail. This will help all of us who work as health care providers and in schools to better understand the first minutes, hours and days of head injuries and how and why we need to respond to our children, athletes, and patients. Please take a moment to look at the Concussion Query here. It need only take a few minutes to respond. Or you may find yourself pausing to recollect some very interesting and powerful memories. I will use all information anonymously.

If you have never had experience with a head injury but know someone who might have, please send this on. For my research I am particularly (but not exclusively) interested in hearing from more girls and young women, younger children, and non-athletes. Stupid stuff is fine, too. One student concussed by "merely" hitting his head on the upper locker door!